Another Year Older, and Still It’s a Puzzle

            I am about to celebrate another birthday, and the prospect only brings me any true sense of joy when I think about the somewhat bittersweet joke about getting older.  It does beat the alternative, or so, at least, I assume.

            The passing of the years has been something of a puzzle to me for a long time, which in and of itself is bizarre, since surely nothing is as clearly obvious as the constancy of time itself.  (Apologies to Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking if I’m wrong.) 

            I was maybe 12 or 13 when my mother shared with me her feeling of how fast it all goes.  (She would have been not even 40 yet herself.)  The idea struck me as singularly odd at the time.  Eight or nine years later, when I saw Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” I did realize that in 2001 I would be 54, but it seemed (and I truly felt) that it would take about 80 years for that year to arrive.

            I came in touch with just how wrong that feeling was when I spent a year writing a combination diary/memoir.  I began it when I turned 49 and concluded it when I turned 50.  It’s a ponderous tome, running some 800 pages and full of narcissistic reminiscences.  I called it, appropriately, “My Fiftieth Year,” although it was as much about what had happened to get me to that point as it was about what was happening to me at the time.

            At some point during that year, it occurred to me that the days, weeks and months were just flying by.  I wanted each day to be somehow momentous or at least noteworthy, but as I tried to make them seem so, in writing about them night after night, I came to understand the truth of my mother’s observation.

            Life is a puzzle in so many ways, biology and the increased knowledge we have about its physical qualities notwithstanding.  I’ve always been struck by the mystery of it all.

            I was not yet 18, having just graduated from high school when I seriously contemplated suicide.  My girlfriend had dumped me very suddenly, as young teens are wont to do, but it was my first real love affair, and I was absolutely crushed.  The pain was almost too much to bear.

            I had two methods in mind, both of which, I felt confident, would cause me minimal physical pain.  I played out the two options as the intensity of the pain continued unabated.  And then, as I actually began to make preparations, a thought occurred to me that literally saved my life.

            What, I wondered, would I have become?  What would this 17-year old, about to start college and begin an adult existence, have turned into if he hadn’t killed himself over a broken heart?

            That thought, wholly egotistical though it was, made me persevere.  The mystery, if you will, kept me alive.  I lived with the pain for years, far longer than I should have as I look back on it, but I did survive. 

            But now, I am that person that the 17-year old wondered about.  The years have passed with remarkable speed, and here I am, the person who didn’t kill himself and instead grew up to see what he would become, to see how the mystery would play out.

            It hasn’t been a real nail-biter.  Oh, I’ve had my moments, to be sure, but no one is going to write a book about the momentous journey that my life was.

            I did go to college, thinking at first I would study to be a minister, then in less than a year committed to a pre-med major.  By the time I graduated, I’d lost my faith and discovered I had no real aptitude for scientific study.

            I then took an ROTC Air Force commission and spent four years evolving politically from a Barry Goldwater conservative to a George McGovern liberal.  You could say I embraced change in fairly cataclysmic fashion.

            While serving in uniform, I discovered the law and determined to become a lawyer.  And the law, in one form or another, has been my calling.  My love for it has led me to a variety of career stops, all of which, happily, have been satisfying and fulfilling.

            I have been a criminal and civil litigator and a business and personal counselor.  I’ve represented entertainers and entertainment promoters.  I’ve held a high-ranking position on a presidential campaign and served as a legislative staff consultant.  I’ve been a lobbyist and a corporate executive.  And, for the last ten years, I’ve been a teacher of the law.

            Somewhere along the way, I discovered my love of writing.  And, in addition to my regular columns, my reviews, my blog, and my 800-page memoir (that no one will ever read), I’ve written a novel (that has never been published but should be).  It’s called “Merging Souls,” and, published or not, it’s my crowning achievement as a writer.

            As a human being, my crowning achievement is my marriage and the two sons Jeri and I brought into the world and raised to become the fine young men they are. 

            Those are my thoughts as another birthday rudely arrives.  They aren’t all that special, but they are mine, and, in the end, I guess that’s the best we can get from the kind of contemplation I engage in every year.

            Back when he was entering his self-proclaimed semi-retirement, maybe 25 years ago, Marlon Brando gave a TV interview in which he got a little philosophical.  The interviewer picked up on his mood and the talk turned to growing old and, ultimately, to dying.

            Brando grew silent for a moment and then said, “You know, I think it’s kind of like this.  We carry on with all the activities of our life and we live every moment without thinking beyond those activities, and then, suddenly, one day we’re lying there dying, and we wonder to ourselves, ‘now what the hell was that all about.’”

            Birthdays are, for me at least, a time to think about what the hell “that” has been all about.  And as I’m about to mark my 64th, I’m still wondering.